> Firearms, or 'Guns', popularized about 400 years ago during the war between the Kalis kingdom and the Andrus kingdom.

>

> During this war the Andrus kingdom was fighting a losing battle as the defending party, in desperation they turned to the non-magical mechanisms of fire-arms as to turn regular non-combat class commoners and peasants into barely viable fodder, which was done by giving countless families muskets, flintlock pistols, and nearing the end of the war rarely an experimental gun called the 'Revolver' which allowed 6 continuous shots before needing to reload.

>

> The revolver, holding only around ten-thousand models known to exist, has gained some collector's value amongst Andrus' nobility. Though counterfeits are not hard to create due to the non-magical nature of the construct, even if the creators need some time to get used to creating the small pieces needed to make a functional version.

>

> Though very impractical, many households still hold a flintlock hidden as a family heirloom and train with firing it for the extra protection it gives, even if the attack it gives is only equal to a level 10 to 15-ish {Mage} and has terrible accuracy.

An excerpt from 'Collector's items within the Kalis kingdom (22nd edition)' by 'Garit Stalmn'

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A bit ago Falc, after having failed to replicate while honestly not finding any actual use for it, had decided to take a look at slime apostle 1- Long may he reign.

He didn't really know what made it level up instead of any of the other acid shooting slimes, though it was probably the intelligence- But that would only be true if it had intelligence before leveling up.

But all of that curiosity was instantly wiped clean with one single moment taking complete precidence.

Slime apostle 1 was jumping about, silently stalking in the dark and getting close to its mark. It jumps were slow, soft, trying to make less noise than its probably soon to die compatriots. Just like always, it noiselessly sat still in the mostly lightless slime plains and waited for the perfect time to strike.

Then, right when the group of three of which one was its chosen prey were distracted by a weak acid-less slime that couldn't even see nearing, it shot out ruthlessly and fled like the respectable coward it was.

What had transpired was no different than otherwise, but... There was one thing that worried him, shook him to his very soul. The little sentient with a weird gray thing surrounding its exposed weak point wasn't dead! It was in pain, yes, but it wasn't exactly dying rapidly as its flesh melted off bone like normal.

There were sentients that could resist an to the face!

Falc's entire calm state of mind was shattered, only kept actually calm due to the fact the tunnels were basically a death trap. But... The sentients were changing! He didn't know how, and it didn't really matter anyways. What mattered was that he wasn't safe anymore!

At any moment one of those bipedal pink things covered in cloth could transcend it's limits and become completely immune to his only line of defence and start charging through everything Falc could set up to protect himself.

All plans of making a slime paragon were instantly snuffed, he needed something new- And fast too.

If slime apostle 1 died, he would be stuck with clueless slimes again! They might be able to semi-consistantly see now, but thinking is also an important part of any monster!

While he contemplated how to somehow slay the grey-headed sentients, he saw slime apostle 1 shooting an once again at the still suffering sentient, and it landed directly on its chest; and this time it worked just fine.

'Slime apostle 1... Learned! It could do that?!'

'Slime apostle 1' has leveled up to level 2.

His perverbial eyes instantly locked on to slime apostle 1, seeing it morph and stray from its original form somehow. Its nuclei changed slightly, its membrane morphed, its weave contorted, its muscles shifted and replicated and the little part of the weave reserved for changed a bit too along with a single small loop being put atop its center a layer above.

Falc was amazed, completely baffled that leveling could do something like this. If it could strengthen slime apostle 1 like this, what would happen if it leveled up a few more times? Would it rival that one sentient leading the large group which set up torches?

Falc mostly remembered him since he gave a lot of essence, a bit more than that sentient which threw out a weird mix of fire and water that first came in with a small sentient.

Could he mimic the changes? What would happen if he made a slime with all the changes in slime apostle 1 and let it level up twice, would it remain the same or would it be even stronger than slime apostle 1?

-But why did it even level up anyways? Falc was a bit confused in all honesty, it killed that one sentient and leveled... Slime apostle 1 leveled up after killing a sentient!

'So, if I let a monster kill some sentients it'll level up?' He thought to himself as he first guided slime apostle away from all the sentients and brought it to the corner of the slime plains before testing a few things.

First was the difference in , so he made it shoot out a bit of acid to show its new power.

The acid, unlike before, shot out with good speed. Unlike before, where it was more like lobbing a stone, it was directly throwing said stone towards the target. The acid had also been more concentrated, not in terms of purity, but in terms of how it was shot out. It was as if the acid was forced through a nozzle, which controlled its spread.

Falc had already begun making a new slime, though it would take a while until he got full insight on the changes in slime apostle 1, he could easily mimic the most obvious change; the little loop atop the weave.

After a test, it was shown that slime apostle 1's was definitively superior, it went both farther and actually corroded out in the stone floor a hole of non-negligable size Falc had to painfully restore with earth mana. Though, the effect of this slime, which had been called 'Inheritor candidate 1'- It being called so just because it was an attempt to inherit the inherently better capabilities of slime apostle 1- Was greater than a normal acid slime, its range was a slight bit better, and the spread was way less along with being a bit faster, and thus also harder to evade.

The nicest thing was that this change costed less than one tenth a point of mp, it was extremely cost efficient. Falc directly put this loop in the standard design of acid slimes, it was just a single little string of mana so it wasn't so hard to instate above a weave.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Though, somewhat suddenly, Falc felt something foreign to him coming from one of the connections to his monsters. It was slime apostle 1, and... It conveyed... Pride?

Falc hesitated before giving back a very clear feeling of confusion, which for some reason caused the apostle of slimes to roil and boil 'Oh- You've got to be kidding me!'

It was very, very similar looking to a seizure, a phenomena the still young core hated to his very magical marrow. But after a quick look at roiling slime to see if he could find out what caused the seizure, finding that the skill was pulling at the rest of the weave and gathering mana from the entire body.

All the power was gathering as a single little ball of mana right under the loop, unstable in nature.

With a single 'Bang', a shot of acid was forced out of slime apostle 1 with impressive power, directly pushing the user back more than two meters while the shot pierced into the rock and cause a giant and still corroding hole.

There was just one question in his mind as he saw the aftermath, could an acid slime do this? He didn't even care about the fact they would end up having their weave contorted like what had happened with slime apostle 1.

Also, slime apostle 1's weave, both and normal, had both deformed and contorted from that shot. It was also taking in mana to restore the giant expenditure, and it seemed that it would take about half a light period to be topped up on mana. Luckily the weave also seemed to be reforming, though that was going very slowly and he couldn't be exactly sure how long it would take to get back to tip-top shape.

Falc quickly ordered it to never do that again, slime apostle 1 was a valuable asset and it getting deformed was not a good idea for the long term.

That didn't stop him from ordering the inheritor candidate to try and do the same, though it had no clue what he was talking about and just shot out another shot of acid like the bumbling moron it was.

Seeing that it would take a while for any worthwhile information to come about, he let the now useless slime go out and explore the world and created another slime after fixing the wall. This time, he increased the size of the loop to see what would happen, and the that was manifested sure did change.

Unlike a shot, the acid was just burst out in the general direction the slime was forced to aim by his command. Of course, the destructive power in one singular point was lower, and so not being applicable for attacking strong sentients. It would directly coat their target in acid, stopping the fear of accidentally not hitting one in the right place, nor letting the problem of actually hitting a sentient survive any longer.

Then that brought the question, what if instead of a loop around the center of the weave, I put a single little ball of mana?

An explosive finish, that's what. The slime he had created with that idea in mind, shot out and exploded. Of course, the power created by that explosion caused damage to the slime and increased the power behind the acid shot out like a claymore. The slime was still alive, but it had completely lost its weave, and wasn't healing. It was 'Spent', and worthless.

...He put a few in the four paths coming out of the kill room, and also in the tunnels. It didn't seem that he needed to worry about them exploding on their own due to the effort required to force the past the 'Jammer' as Falc came to call it, but he could at any moment command them to go boom boom and kill anything in front of them.

Falc wanted to name the variants he made, but was very quickly informed that the first of the acid slimes inside the kill room were ready to be released from his mental chains, allowing him to restore his processing power by a bit.

With this, he finally realized that the worth of the variants was next to nothing compared to what they were derived from. He quickly gave a check on slime apostle 1's health, ability to fight and mobility. It was, of course, still suffering from a deformed weave. But its was working... Good enough. And the extra muscle formed during the level up let it jump around in various, less static, ways. It now actually had the ability to both run away and pursue others!

Though, when Falc tried to give this new muscle arrangement to a new slime, it had a seizure.

It would be a sacrifice to the sentients like all seizuring slimes before them, it was a sad fate, but why would Falc use his limited supply of processing power just to let a seizuring slime not constantly seizure?

Since slime apostle 1 was doing fine, Falc allowed it to roam the lands once more. Mostly so that it could reach level 3, if that was even possible. In the meanwhile he started to experiment with changing the weave of standard slimes to match slime apostle 1's original structure.

Slime apostle 1's actions were conveniently still inside the dungeon, and thus he could keep watching its actions. One of which was to shoot the standing torches from afar in order to once again let shadow reclaim its lost territory and increase the space it could use to stalk its prey.

Back to the new inheritor instance, the slime seemed to be... A bit tougher, but it was still lacking in both sight and intelligence to see if this was the part of the weave that allowed slime apostle 1 to gather mana for a grand attack. Considering the new weave would cost a total of 0.3 extra mana in comparison to Falc's own C++ weave he had formulated back in the day, and would only have a bit more than a barely noticeable effect, Falc cast it aside for a future Falc to deal with.

Noticing that slime apostle 1 was already getting back in the motions of sniping an adventurer from a bit away, Falc turned his focus away to see how good it did, and prepared to get a few sacrificial lambs running over to help it if things went arwy.

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A party of four adventurers walked as one of the dozen lights seen in the darkness of the slime plains, an assortment of a {Warrior}, {Hunter}, {Spell slinger} and {Spearman} "'The hell is it so dark down here?! It's supposed to be the 'Slime plains', not the 'Slime gallows'!" The {Hunter} complained.

"Deal with it, it's a new dungeon, did you really expect a false sky or something?" The female {Spearman} with oxymoronic nature interwoven into her veins responded to the question not meant to be answered.

The {Hunter}, not one to be one-upped, snapped back "I expected there to be light! Like maybe some of that glowing moss on the ceiling, the stuff we saw growing near the entrance!"

The {Spell slinger}, completely unconcerned by the scuffle and more what had just been said "There's glowing moss at the entrance?"

"Well, more like the stairway to the first room had some right after we entered, though it completely stopped growing after a point." The {Hunter} responded.

"Hmm... I'll need to look into that."

The four barely knew each other, except for the {Spell slinger} and the {Hunter}. The {Warrior} was wearing a helm of regular iron for some reason, and the {Spearman} seemed a little jealous as she looked at it for some reason.

Though the reason was soon revealed, as the holder of the torch, the {Spearman}, was suddenly hit in the head with a shot of acid fluid. Due to her physically oriented class she was even able to feel her face melting... Kind of a gross thought, got to stop having those.

Luckily the torch was still burning as the {Spell slinger} cooked up multiple small balls of fire mana which he quickly shot out in the rough direction where the acid was shot from before quickly taking out his old family heirloom and using the light given by his spell to try and find the culprit responsible, actually finding a slime which he quickly shot before cocking back the hammer and returning it to his side.

Though that wasn't the end of it, as the {Hunter} ran to the {Spell slinger}'s side while taking out a dagger. But the worst happened, the torch went out, and the {Spell slinger} saw the cause was a shot of fluid the same as the one directed at the {Spearman} face.

This wasn't worth it, and so the duo of old friends ran back to the recently set-up torch at the entrance while the {Spell slinger} prepared a very simple barrier spell to surround him. All it would do was counteract any fast moving objects with a bit of kinetic resistance.

"Wait u- AAAR-" The {Warrior}'s cry could be heard from the darkness, luckily the {Spell slinger} decided to bounce right away, shown by the sudden shot of acid that consumed his barrier before he and his friend reached the stairs.